Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (6 page)

Most charitable city, based on actual donations: Miami. Least: Detroit.

PSYCHED FOR CYCADS

• Cycads contain BMAA, a paralyzing neurotoxin. But native peoples in Australia, Africa, and North America found ways to leach out the poison and turn the starchy stems into edible flour.

• The Seminole Indians of Florida called cycads the “white bread plant.” Their entire diet was based around
sofkee,
a pudding made from its starch. When Confederate soldiers garrisoned in Florida during the Civil War ran out of provisions, they tried to create their own version of sofkee. Unfortunately they skipped the soaking process that removed the plant’s poison and hundreds died.

• White settlers in Florida eventually learned the Seminole process and created the first industry in the area by making a cooking powder they called arrowroot starch, or
coontie,
which was what the Florida cycad was called. During World War I, army doctors discovered that coontie mixed with beef broth was the only food that soldiers who’d been gassed could stomach. The coontie industry lasted until the 1930s, when the market collapsed due to the over-harvesting of native cycads.

• The Japanese word for cycad is
sotetsu
. Cycad nuts were eaten as a food of last resort during famines, and a particularly bad famine in the 1920s is still referred to as
sotetsu jinkoku,
or “cycad hell.”

• The Japanese sago “palm” is perhaps the best-known cycad in the world (though misnamed—it isn’t a palm).

• A great petrified forest of cycads lies just outside Minnekahta, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was once a national monument until fossil hunters stripped away all of the visible specimens and sold them to museums and collectors.

• The largest cycad alive today is the Hope’s Cycad, located in Daintree, Australia. It’s 1,000 years old and 65 feet high.

• Cycad seeds look like pine cones, and can weigh as much as 90 pounds.

Zimbabwe issued $1 billion bills in 2008. Price of a bottle of beer: $150 billion.

OLYMPIC PRANKSTERS

When American snowboarder Scotty Lago was forced out of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver after he posed for a suggestive photo with his bronze medal, that got us wondering: What other silly stunts have been pulled at the Olympics?

A
thletes:
Dean Kent, Corney Swanepoel, and Cameron Gibson, three swimmers representing New Zealand at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China

Prank:
Taking photos of a young teammate—in a compromising position, in a compromising condition, in a compromising place

Details:
The day after the closing ceremonies, one of the younger members of the team, 18-year-old Daniel Bell, got drunk in a Beijing nightclub where the Speedo swimsuit company was hosting an open-bar party. Kent, Swanepoel, and Gibson found Bell passed out in the restroom (on the pot), and took immediate action. After calling for medical assistance, they cleaned Bell up and dragged him home…but not before taking a picture of him semi-nude (and still passed out) in the toilet stall. Somebody posted copies of the picture around the New Zealand swimmers’ quarters in the Olympic Village, and from there they spread to the rest of the team. That’s how the New Zealand Olympic Committee learned of the prank.

What Happened:
Kent, Swanepoel, and Gibson were thrown off the Olympic team and exiled from the Olympic Village. They had to spend their last night in China in a Beijing hotel. (Bell received no punishment.)

Athletes:
Troy Dalbey and Doug Gjertsen, American swimmers who won gold medals in two relay events in the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea

Prank:
Grand Theft Lion

Details:
The day after winning their medals, Dalbey and Gjertsen celebrated their victory by bar-hopping with friends. As they were leaving the bar in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Dalbey grabbed a decorative lion’s head off the wall and walked out with it. When the police caught up with them in another bar, they still had the lion and were arrested for theft (valued at $830).

Odds you’ll get stuck on your next elevator ride: 1 in 100,000.

What Happened:
South Korean prosecutors agreed to drop the charges after Dalbey and Gjertsen admitted guilt and wrote a letter apologizing to the South Korean people. The U.S. Olympic Committee was less forgiving: Dalbey and Gjertsen were dropped from the team and confined to their Olympic Village quarters until they could leave the country. Dalbey was later suspended from competition for 18 months; Gjertsen, who was cleared of the theft charges, received a three-month suspension. (They both got to keep their gold medals.)

Athlete:
Dawn Fraser, one of the greatest Australian swimmers of all time and winner of gold medals in the 1956, 1960, and 1964 Summer Games

Prank:
Playing capture the flag…with the emperor’s flag

Details:
During the 1964 Tokyo Games, Fraser and two friends were walking by the Imperial Palace when they saw an Olympic flag on a flagpole and decided to steal it. Police caught them red-handed.

What Happened:
Apparently pranks are more acceptable in Japan than they are in South Korea, because as soon as the police realized who Fraser was, they released the three without charge,
after
Fraser signed autographs for the arresting officers. Emperor Hirohito even insisted that Fraser keep the flag. But the story doesn’t end there. Fraser had been making waves with the Australian Olympic Committee throughout the Games, marching in the opening ceremonies after she’d been told not to, wearing her own swimsuit instead of the one provided by the team’s sponsor (hers was more comfortable), and at the closing ceremonies, wearing a friend’s hat instead of the one that came with her team uniform. Small infractions all, but when Fraser got home, the Australian Swimming Union banned her from competition for 10 years, effectively ending her swimming career and shutting her out of the 1968 Summer Olympics. That, in turn, denied her a shot at becoming the first female swimmer to win gold medals in four different Olympics.

Athlete:
Jim Chapin, a speed skater competing in the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York

If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during WWII, your birthplace is listed as a post office box in Santa Fe—to keep the Manhattan Project a secret.

Prank:
Boorish behavior—with an actual
boar

Details:
When Chapin learned that the Olympic Village cooks were preparing a special exotic-food dinner for the athletes, he and some friends “borrowed” the carcasses of a wild boar, a shark, and a barracuda from the kitchen. They snuck the 250-pound boar into the quarters of speed skater Beth Heiden and tucked it under the covers of her bed, lying flat on its back with its legs and snout pointing up toward the ceiling. “The boar still had the hair and everything,” Chapin told the
Washington Post
. “Sure would have liked to see Heiden’s face. We considered leaving the shark in the bathtub, but we thought it was too risky.” (No word on what happened to the barracuda.)

What Happened:
They got away with it.

Athlete:
Hal Prieste, an American diver who won a bronze medal at the 1920 summer games in Antwerp, Belgium

Prank:
Stealing another flag—a
very
important flag

Details:
Acting on a dare from teammate Duke Kahanamoku, Prieste, 24, climbed a 15-foot flag pole at the Olympic stadium and stole the Olympic flag. Not just any Olympic flag, either: The flag he stole was the
very first
one to feature the Olympic symbol of five interlocking rings, which had been created in 1913.

What Happened:
Prieste was never caught, and the fate of that famous first flag remained a mystery for decades. Then one day in 2000, Prieste, then 103, decided to return the flag he’d kept in the bottom of a suitcase for 77 years. The flag was handed over in a special ceremony during the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. “Will there be a plaque with my name on it?” Prieste jokingly asked officials. Sure enough, if you ever get a chance to visit the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, right next to the flag display you’ll see a plaque thanking Prieste for giving it back.

NO TAN IN MONTANA

On December 14, 1924, the temperature in Fairfield, Montana, dropped 84°F—from 63° at noon to -21° at midnight, the greatest 12-hour temperature change ever recorded in the United States.

FLUBBED HEADLINES

Whether silly, naughty, obvious, or just plain bizarre, they’re all real
.

UAW Elects King as Next President

Big Ben Celebrates 150 Years of Bongs

HOMELESS MAN UNDER HOUSE ARREST

Colleen Campbell champions the rights of murder victims after being one herself

Tight end retires after colon surgery

Seven testify toddler looked hot

Editor’s wife rented to 2 suspects, FBI says

Woman in sumo wrestler suit assaulted her ex-girlfriend in gay pub after she waved at man dressed as a Snickers bar

Want to spell like a champ? Read Wenster’s Dictionary

D
IANA
W
AS
S
TILL
A
LIVE
H
OURS
B
EFORE
S
HE
D
IED

Arson Suspect is Held in Fire

Ten Commandments: Supreme Court says some okay, some not

Minus shorts, banks get breathing room

Black History Month Will Be Held Feb. 23

Teen Learns to Live With Stutttering

A’s Hole Keeps Getting Deeper

Steele Pure Gold

Death Is Nation’s Top Killer

S
OME 70,000 TURTLE EGGS TO BE WHISKED FAR FROM OIL

POLL SAYS THAT 53% BELIEVE MEDIA OFFEN MAKES MISTAKES

World’s largest tire manufacturer: Lego. They make 300 million toy tires every year.

HOW NOT TO ROB A BANK

These days, it’s harder than ever to hold up a bank and actually get away with it, but some people do. Not these robbers, though: Each one made a key mistake. Let’s see what they did wrong
.

T
HE JOB:
A 16-year-old boy handed a note to a teller at People’s United Bank in Fairfield, Connecticut, in March 2010. The demand: “Put $100,000 into a bag.” As the teller started filling a bag, the boy noticed the bank was being put on lockdown, so he ran out with only $900. He made it to the parking lot and started running toward his getaway car. Inside it was his accomplice, 27-year-old Albert Bailey. A swarm of cops were already there and easily apprehended the pair.

THE MISTAKE:
About 15 minutes earlier, Bailey actually phoned the bank and said, “Get the money ready—we’re coming!”

THE JOB:
In April 2005, a group of armed men stormed into a Chicago bank and tied up several bank employees. The gang escaped with $81,000. The police had no leads and no suspects.

THE MISTAKE:
Five months later, one of the robbers called a “Morning Zoo” Chicago radio show and bragged about the job. Calling himself “D,” he gave details that only the robbers would know. An FBI agent on her way to work was listening to the show, so she went to the radio station and traced the call to a cell phone owned by Randy Washington, 24. He and an accomplice, William Slate, 19, were both arrested.

THE JOB:
In March 2010, Robert Yoder, 55, of Fallbrook, Washington, walked into a bank and demanded the teller fill up a pouch full of money. The teller complied. Yoder walked out of the bank, got into his truck, and drove away.

THE MISTAKE:
Yoder was a tow-truck driver, and the name of his company was printed on the truck, which could clearly be seen by a surveillance camera. Yoder got a call that afternoon about a broken-down vehicle, but when he showed up, there was no broken-down vehicle, only the police. He was arrested.

THE JOB:
A man walked into a Chase Bank in Chicago wearing a clown mask with a big red nose and red hair. He was carrying a toy machine gun. He handed a demand note to a teller, who filled up a bag with money. The clown ran out of the bank.